Chapter 570 - 260: Is Electromagnetic Wave Light? (Part 2)

The root cause of these two problems still lies in ingrained cognitive barriers—a lot of people think 1850 is practically another era, and being able to calculate 10x10=100 is already impressive.

This is actually a very serious mistake.

In reality.

was already a crucial junction for modern science.

At this point, many fields weren’t nearly as primitive as people think.

Take vacuum measurement, for example.

As early as 1643, Galileo’s student Torricelli built the world’s first device to measure gas pressure.

He confirmed experimentally that atmospheric pressure is equivalent to the pressure of a 760mm mercury column... which is 7.6×10^4Pa, and pioneered quantitative measurements of vacuum.

And before 1850, Borden—the big shot who came up with the Borden tube—even invented deformable vacuum gauges.

Otherwise, how do you think Maxwell managed to derive the speed of light in a vacuum from his equations?

There is indeed an insurmountable gap between 1850 and 2022, that’s without question.

But that doesn’t mean that era was a pure primitive society with nothing noteworthy.

It’s just like today’s web novels—by 2022, we’ve got not just one but several works with average subscriptions over 100,000, something unimaginable in 2012—back then, top works could barely hit twenty thousand or so.

But can you say web novels from 2012 had zero highlights?

Obviously not.

’Heavenly Cover’, ’Devouring’, ’Eternal Life’, and ’Mortal’—even by 2022 standards, these works are still classic.

Every era has its limitations, but also its bright spots.

Back to reality.

Now that we’ve got V=1/√μ0ε0, the next step is simple.

"V=1/√4π×10^-7m·kg/C2 X 8.854187818×10^-12C2s2/kg·m3..."

This complicated calculation, of course, was left for Maxwell to handle:

"So V=√8.987552x10^16m2/s2..."

"Final answer: 2.9979X10^8m/s!"

The number Maxwell calculated is the speed of light in a vacuum. Xu Yun and others had some measurement errors, so a bit of difference after the decimal is perfectly normal.

"2.9979X10^8m/s..."

Faraday repeated the number, feeling emotional and, for some reason, suddenly had a strange idea:

If he wanted a long-term job at the University of Cambridge, he’d probably need to regularly ask Prince Albert for some nitroglycerin...

He then took a deep breath, looked at Xu Yun, and asked:

"Luo Feng, judging from this, are light and electromagnetic waves really the same thing?"

Xu Yun nodded decisively, just about to say something, but paused right before speaking.

In that instant.

A rush of thoughts passed through his mind.

He hesitated for a moment, and what should have been said was swapped for another sentence:

"Yes, Mr. Faraday. Based on the research of ’Fei Yu’s’ ancestor back then, he came to a final conclusion."

"That is: electromagnetic waves are a special kind of light."

Anyone who’s been through high school physics will probably know this.

Light is actually a type of electromagnetic wave—a subset of electromagnetic waves.

Simply put, electromagnetic waves within a certain frequency—or wavelength range—we call light.

For example, humans are just a part of the primate order. If you liken humans to light, then electromagnetic waves are all primates.

Of course.

This is just a basic concept—it gets really complicated the deeper you go.

For instance, you could say electromagnetic waves don’t need a medium to propagate, or argue that spacetime itself is the medium—like spacetime ripples in string theory’s open strings.

So the curvature of spacetime caused by gravity can influence light, and some people even believe the ether everyone searched for was actually spacetime itself and so on...

Especially those amateur scientists, who love to come up with bizarre opinions in this area.

It’s rumored that last year someone even emailed the Academy, hoping to visit the Tokamak for observation...

Others say "To hear of the Dao in the morning is enough to die in the evening"; this guy is "To hear of the Dao and die instantly"...

In short.

No matter which deeper theory is right, the idea that light is a subset of electromagnetic waves still stands.

But after some thought, Xu Yun decided to offer the opposite claim:

Electromagnetic waves are a kind of light.

After all, so far, ’Fei Yu’s’ persona is just too perfect.

History has taught us over and over—a flawless ’god’ doesn’t exist, and always leads to issues.

Everyone has made mistakes, even had black marks that people nitpick.

In the long run, that’s not a good thing.

So Xu Yun simply did a Xiao He self-sabotage, giving ’Fei Yu’ a dark halo.

Actually, Xu Yun had considered this issue previously.

But finding an appropriate ’black mark’—something that wouldn’t impact scientific history much—was tricky.

As luck would have it, electromagnetic waves turned out to be just right.

The debate over the properties of light and electromagnetic waves always stayed theoretical—practical work continued as usual regardless.

Heck, you could even say both light and electromagnetic waves are made-up things—call them ’Fishing Maidens’—it wouldn’t impact real experiments much.

And in a few years,

Once JJ Thomson discovers cathode rays experimentally, people will probably start doubting Xu Yun’s claim.

When the truth that light is an electromagnetic wave comes out, everyone will finally relax:

Oh, turns out Mr. Fei Yu can make mistakes after all...

Perspective.jpg.

Of course.

At this time, Faraday had no idea what Xu Yun was thinking.

Hearing Xu Yun’s explanation, he just felt a faint sense of oddness but quickly accepted it.

After all, according to current phenomena, there’s really no obvious difference between light and electromagnetic waves.

Xu Yun and Faraday then used devices like polarizers to verify the properties of electromagnetic waves—discovering it also refracts, reflects, and polarizes.

At this stage, all that remained was wrapping up.

Faraday took out a piece of parchment and wrote the final conclusion:

[Verified: Electromagnetic waves are a special kind of light]

Faraday and his team then compiled the experimental results, planning to formally present them at the next academic conference.

Thus.

The first wave of Xu Yun’s antics at the University of Cambridge was formally capped off.

From now on, nothing should be more exciting than all this...

Right?

With Faraday and Joule Kirchhoff involved, Xu Yun really couldn’t imagine anything bigger than this...

Yeah, absolutely impossible!

If anything bigger happens, he’ll eat that axe right then and there!

Half an hour later.

With the equipment packed up, Xu Yun and Maxwell returned to Room 302.

As soon as they entered,

Xu Yun took off his scarf and lay flat on the bed.

Honestly.

The past two days’ experiments looked smooth, but Xu Yun’s shoulders felt quite a bit of pressure.

Even a tiny slip could’ve caused irreversible consequences across the whole process.

Luckily, with the luck he’d built up from diligent updates in his last life, he made it through this round.

And as Xu Yun lay there,

The long-missed holographic screen appeared before him.

[Detected: Wallbreaker’s first-stage task completed, task rating and next-stage task generating...]

.....